Stellar Cartography
Stellar Cartography is the science of navigation on the interstellar scale. A proper stellar cartographer requires years of training in order to be certified to reliably chart new routes through uncharted space. It requires a knowledge of how bodies interact with each other and a Starship and how best to use this knowledge to ensure the starship arrives at the right location once the warp drive is initiated. Stellar cartography takes some time to develop after the warp drive itself is already made available. In addition to true navigators, there are Pilots, who have not yet completed training and are considered initiates. They are able to read existing plots, but cannot make new ones. Human stellar cartography In the Human Domain, the first navigator was a Starborne named Astrea Geirsdotter. Most of the navigators which appeared afterwards were also starbornes. These days, going to school to receive training to be a navigator is not only highly prestigious but guarantees a student subsidy from many governments and organizations. Humans divide the stars into an administrative hierarchy, distinguishing different 'volumes' of space. The smallest unit of interstellar space is the cubic lightyear, although this is rarely used at an official level. The smallest administrative unit is the cubic parsec, which consists of 8.21 cubic lightyears, derived from the distance a Starship with a 3000C warp drive can cover in 24 Earth hours, rather than the astrophysical basis for the parsec based on astronomical units. Four cubic parsecs join to form a sub-quadrant, and four sub-quadrants come together into a quadrant. Four quadrants make up a Region. At the region level, each of its constituent quadrants receive a color: Blue is always the "northwest" corner, Yellow always the "northeast", Green always the "southeast" and Red always the "southwest" quadrant. The region level is the smallest level to receive a Domain headquarters, often with a regional garrison of troops and ships. Regions are also the first level to receive unique names. Four regions constitute a Sector, and, finally, four sectors form a Zone, the largest administrative division. The Human Domain has four zones. Star systems often have two distinct names on human starmaps. The first name a system always receives is the Astrofleet Designation given by the Exploration Fleet or other Domain organization upon the system's discovery. This designation is created by a systematic protocol which draws from three pools of names. The first pool pulled from for the first part of the name is a letter from the Greek alphabet, joined by a couple Norse Runes and the Zhuyin Chinese phonetic system. The second and largest pool is an extended NATO alphabet, joined by names from various mythologies and toponyms on Earth. The third is simply the Zone it belongs to. When a new system is discovered a random name is drawn from each pool and so each system will have three. An example of this is the Iota Zulu system, from the Greek letter Iota and the NATO 'letter' Zulu. Its full name from be Iota Zulu (Eastern Fringe). Each planet in the system is then simply given a Roman numeral based on their position relative to the star (so Earth would be Sol III). This is how it would appear on the General Archive of the Stars. The problem with this system is that it can only generate about a million unique names per zone, for a total of four million. This is not nearly enough to issue a unique name for every star system under the Domain's sphere of influence. This is where common names come into play. Iota Zulu may be the Astrofleet Designation of the system, but outside of official administrative and military contexts, most people would call it Eru-Judian instead. In this case, the name comes from the old Desan name for a colony there. Common names eventually replace the old designations in the Archives. Category:Stellar Cartography